Monks ~

Brief summary

1. Is there a Perl way to set cookies after the HTTP header has been written?
2. Is there a Perl way to read cookies without initiating a new page request?

Details

I'm looking for a little more flexibility in setting and reading cookies. First, here are what I consider to be CGI.pm's limitations. If I'm wrong about these, then the rest of my assumptions are flawed as well.

• Cookies can be set only when the header is sent.
• Multiple cookies can be set, but they all must be set at the same time.
• Once the header is written, no more cookies can be set for that page.
• Cookies are read from the browser only once per script (? see note below)

I'm not sure about the final point; I think it's more a limitation of the "magic cookie" spec than of CGI.pm. As I understand it, the user agent sends cookie information with each page request. This would indicate to me that there's no way to read a cookie without the user agent initiating a new request. I've done some simple tests which seem to confirm this, but perhaps there's another WTDI.

My other question is, How can I set cookies other than at HTTP header write time? What makes me think this is possible is that some annoying sites *cough*ZDNet*cough* appear to attempt to set a cookie with every image, long after the page header has been sent and displayed. Also, so-called 3rd-party cookies would have to work outside the page header as well, since they're usually set with banner ads or web bugs.

Am I misunderstanding what's happening here, or are these cookies really being set independent of the HTTP header? (I know you can set cookies with JavaScript, but like a one-fingered man can do calculus on an abacus - slowly and unreliably.)

Thanks muchly,
--
man with no legs, inc.

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